Small Traditions
by rumpelsnorcack
Summary: It is the small moments in his life that show Harry what he has.


_A/N This was written for the wonderful Whirl_gig who is an amazing person, a fantastic beta and who desperately wanted a Christmas story to tide her over til December. This is the result._

The children were finally in bed. Harry sank thankfully onto his chair in their cosy kitchen and let out a huge sigh. Ginny smiled at him mischievously over the top of her mug of steaming apple cider. She was sitting on the other side of the table and looked calm and collected in stark contrast to Harry's dishevelled state.

'I thought you said they'd be in bed by nine,' she said. 'I distinctly remember a cocky swagger as you assured me that they would be asleep by ten so we could wrap presents and be in bed by midnight.' There was a glimmer of amusement in her eyes as she slid a mug of the sweet drink across to Harry, who wrapped grateful hands around it.

Harry groaned, and flung his head back. 'Well, I didn't count on James's million sneaky ways to get up to try and find his way past the imperturbable charm we put on our closest. You know he got hold of my wand and was trying to cast _finite_ on the closet?'

'Oh, Harry! What will I ever do with you?' There was affectionate frustration in her tone as she watched him start to relax as he drank. 'You should know by now that our son could sneak his way out of George's shop, and that's saying a lot given the jinxes on that place – and he'd get in a ton of trouble by the time we realised he'd gone, too.' Ginny's voice was light and teasing, and instead of bristling as he would if someone else questioned his optimism regarding his son, Harry just laughed with her.

He continued, beginning to enjoy his tale of woe. 'Then there was Albus's need to be assured that he really had been a good enough boy for Father Christmas to come to him. James has been telling him that he's too nervous for Father Christmas to be bothered with.' Harry sighed again, deeply thankful that James was now masquerading as a sleeping angel and that he could relax for a few moments before having to drag himself to the bedroom to do this infernal wrapping. Then the decorating. He was officially regretting the impulse that said it would be cool to decorate after the kids went to bed on Christmas Eve. Really regretting it.

'Then, if those two weren't bad enough, Lily got woken up by the noise and started howling, so Albus joined her because if there's noise Father Christmas won't come. Nevermind that by doing that he was adding to the noise.' Harry stopped, and looked at Ginny with a gleam in his eye that verged on hysteria. 'Remind me again why we decided to go with this silly Muggle tradition instead of sensibly giving presents to the kids from us like normal wizards.'

By this time Ginny was laughing, the glimmer of amusement in her eyes transformed to genuine mirth as her warm chuckle swept over him. Harry looked at her sheepishly and laughed too.

Ginny reached across the table and took Harry's hand. 'We chose to do this, Harry, because you missed out on it as a child, and wanted to live it again.' The look in her eye became mischievous. 'So that makes it officially your fault.'

'Oh, then _don't_ remind me,' Harry teased back. 'What _is_ the time?'

Ginny cast an eye at the clock on the wall. 'One am.'

'Merlin,' groaned Harry again. 'I guess I'd better get to it then.'

'Not so fast, Potter. You've been focussed on the kids all day; it's time for you to relax a little.'

'But Ginny, it's one o'clock, and you said yourself this is all my fault.'

'Yep, on both counts. But you happen to have an extremely talented wife who has planned ahead.' Seeing his confused look, she got up, came round the table and took his hand. 'Come on, I have something to show you.'

Befuddled by lack of sleep and the cider he had downed, Harry followed her into the living room. What he saw made him stand still in amazement. It was fully decorated, the lights he had convinced several fairies to inhabit glimmered in the dark, lighting up the tree and casting a muted glow over the whole room. At the base of the heavily embellished tree sat several gifts, already wrapped and tucked enticingly under fragrant branches.

He turned to Ginny. 'How? When did you do this?'

Holding his gaze, she smiled and said, 'unlike you, I am a dreadful pessimist when it comes to my eldest son, so I have been wrapping presents every evening for the past week and hiding them in our closet. Then while you were refereeing the chaos upstairs I was doing a bit of quick wandwork down here.' She intercepted the look he cast at the room and interpreted it correctly. 'Hey! Just because Father Christmas is a Muggle thing doesn't mean we have to do it all the Muggle way, especially at one in the morning.'

He smiled down at her. 'Much as I want to complain about doing this 'the right way,' I have to admit I like your style Mrs Potter.' The light in her eyes changed subtly as she very deliberately placed her hands on his hips, right where she knew it affected his concentration the most, and leaned up to whisper in his ear.

'I happen to know that a very effective sleeping charm has been placed on a couple of rooms in the house. The occupants won't be waking for at least another eight hours. I'd say that's plenty of time for you to pay some attention to your wife, and then get some well-needed sleep.'

Slipping away, she cast him the sort of look over her shoulder that made him growl and follow her up the stairs with a speed that he would never have thought he had in him just minutes ago.

* * * * *

The peace of the Living Room was shattered as soon as the sleeping charm lifted and the children crashed downstairs yelling their heads off. Well, two of them crashed. Lily, unable to get herself out of her cot, just stood holding on to the bars and howled. Even at barely one she knew that it wasn't _fair_ that older brothers could do so much that she couldn't.

Harry slid one reluctant eyelid open. Ginny had already got up and was wrapping herself in one of the silky robes he loved so much.

'Could you stop the boys from destroying the presents while I get Lily up?' she said as she twisted her hair into a knot at the base of her neck while watching Harry emerge from the blankets. A single strand of her hair had escaped and was fluttering enticingly near her ear. As he passed her, Harry tucked the strand into the knot and kissed the spot of skin it had brushed against.

'You know, with all that other wandwork you did last night, you could have put a repelling charm on the presents,' he pretended to grumble as he left the room. Ginny grinned at him.

'And miss the chance to tell you to corral the boys again? Never. It's far too entertaining.' She left the room too and as Harry started down the stairs he heard his little girl's cries stop abruptly and a childish giggle drifted towards him.

Despite the crash that had woken the house, what Harry found when he got downstairs melted his heart. James, usually such a force of nature that it seemed he literally didn't stop until sleep clobbered him over the head, was sitting cross-legged on the floor staring in open-mouthed wonder at the tree with the presents under it, Albus tucked into his side. Their little pyjama-clad forms quivered with excitement – or maybe cold, Harry thought as he cast a warming spell on the room.

When Ginny came down with Lily a few minutes later, she found all her boys huddled near the tree admiring the bounty underneath. James was telling his father in a carrying whisper exactly what he thought Father Christmas might have brought him, and Albus was curled in Harry's lap, thumb in his mouth and eyes fixed on a present with a card that started with an 'A' just in case it might disappear before Mummy came down with Lily.

Ginny stood in the doorway admiring them all, drinking in this moment of peace before what she knew would become a joyous muddle of paper and ribbon and toys from one side of the room to the other. She wondered, not for the first time, how toys that fit so nicely under the tree while wrapped could suddenly not even fit into one room once the paper and packaging were removed.

Harry turned his head to look at her, and their eyes locked. He smiled at her and they stayed that way for several seconds, just enjoying the whispering James, the entranced Albus and the stillness of the morning. Getting bored of being in one place, Lily stretched and wiggled and loudly demanded to be put down on the floor and the moment was lost in the stirrings of three excited children.

'Let's open some presents,' Ginny smiled as she joined the rest of the family by the tree.

The noise levels in the room increased exponentially as the kids leapt up and started handing them out to everyone.

* * * * *

Sometime later, after bellies had been filled, presents opened, clean-up done and small bodies dressed, the family left the scene of chaos for one of even more boundless energy and noise. When they arrived at the Burrow, it was to see several children already making a joyous cacophony in the front yard. Snowballs were flying thick and fast and childish screams echoed through the yard. Harry and Ginny laughed as their children dived in and added to the general atmosphere; even Lily tumbled around on the outskirts clapping her pudgy hands.

It looked like everyone was here already, so they went inside to find the other adults. There is a general expectation that when adults get together, it is a more sedate affair than when children do. That never seemed to be the case with the Weasley clan. There was just as much noise and bustle when the older members of the family got together as was generated by the children, and although overwhelming at first it was such a welcoming muddle that it was impossible not to be drawn in to it.

Harry allowed himself to be dragged into the Living Room where several people were trying to decide the best way to seat everyone for the meal.

'I think we should just get food in the kitchen and then sit wherever we like to eat it,' Arthur was enthusiastically saying. 'I've seen Muggles at it down in the village. They sit all over the lawn.'

'But Mr Weasley ...'

'Call me Arthur, Hermione.'

'But it's snowing out there. We can't sit outside.'

Fleur shuddered. 'Anyway, 'ow would ze children cope sitting anywhere? It would be mess from one end of ze house to anozzer.'

'They'd be fine,' Bill tried to reassure her, but the look she gave him quelled him, and he added quickly, 'well, what if we sat them at a table and everyone else did their own thing?'

'You know we have this argument every year, and you know Mum always wins,' said Ginny with a chuckle. 'So why do we bother?'

'Because it's tradition,' giggled Victoire, who believed she was old enough to be one of the adults and refused to join in the 'childish' running around in the snow outside.

'Yes it is,' smiled Molly coming into the room. 'And we will be in the kitchen as we always are. There is plenty of room for all of us.'

Harry caught Ginny's eye and couldn't help grinning at her. Molly always said that and it was always a really tight squeeze, even in the larger kitchen that Arthur had built after his many children had generated grandchildren to keep Molly busy. But Molly could never be persuaded to eat dinner anywhere but at a properly laden table and no-one else had the heart to shout her down.

'You'd better hope no-one else has any kids, Mum,' Ron said around a mouthful of roast turkey. 'There is seriously no more room in this place. We'd all have to start going to Harry's place if there were any more of us.'

'I wouldn't mind,' said Harry. 'Be nice to actually fill the house.'

'Not bloody likely,' Ginny protested. 'That would mean I'd have to do the cooking! Dad'll just have to make this place bigger if that happens.'

Talk subsided in a general contented flurry of eating. Molly had prepared a feast, and there was enough turkey, mashed potato and roast vegetables to satisfy even the hungriest Weasley. Harry looked around thinking again how lucky he was to have found this group. The chance meeting of two eleven year old boys on a train had led to all of this. Through everything that had happened to him these people had been his one constant. They had always been his family. He looked sideways and caught Ginny's eye. She smiled at him, almost as if she knew what he was thinking. He had met her that day, too. Talking to a red-haired family on a train station now seemed like one of those precious moments that mold worlds and change lives, and yet at the time it hadn't seemed monumental.

Harry felt a gentle pressure on his foot and pulled himself out of his memories, smiling at his wife as he picked up his fork again. In the here and now, at a Christmas dinner with his family, Harry was thankful that it had all been worth it. The small traditions of the day, even the late night stress of Christmas Eve, reminded him that he finally had what he always wanted. He had a peaceful family life surrounded by people he loved who loved him back. Just then Lily, who was sitting beside Harry, waved her hands around and mashed potato went flying. Laughing, he turned to help her and the moment slipped away into the comforting normality of family life.


End file.
